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Civilization III from Sid Meier
blitzrage writes "Here is some info on the long awaited Civilization III game from Sid Myer. Thankfully the patent got back to Sid Meier, after some games of hot potatoe with it. The story is on Neoseeker." Having large portions of my life to the original, II, Railroad Tycoon and Alpha Centauri, I'm not sure if I should be joyful about this, or fearful of the time I'll lose.
Looks like they aren't going to create a whole new game, just polish the ideas from the original Civilization and Civlization II. For instance, diplomacy and war will be greatly improved, the terrain/resources-system will be better and just about everything will be tweaked to make it better than the previous versions.
Personally, I'm really looking forward to this game. I really like how they are listening to the fans and adding features on request (to a limit, of course).
Well, for starters...
a) implement air units in a _reasonable_ way -- find a way to let them fly OVER other units, for cryin' out loud. In SMAC you could block planet-busting missiles with a line of Chiron locusts...
b) less blatant AI cheating; even if they know exactly how much tech and money you have, and whether you have nukes, AI's really shouldn't *flaunt* it.
c) tech costs that are based on specific areas, and not just how many (of any kind) techs you already have
d) differentiate between "hard to kill" versus "likely to kill you if you try". Not all battles should end in a unit death.
e) a GOTO algorithm that actually handles a *round world* and doesn't try to go the long way around if you cross 0 longitude.
f) quality control. Please, fewer blatant bugs like infinite-range AI missiles, et al.
g) auto-engineers/formers that AREN'T so irritating, riding around rails in infinite loops, that I vaporize them out of contempt.
h) Interface improvements. e.g. ability to drag a line indicating multiple squares where I want a railroad to be built. CivII/SMAC both degenerate into massive amounts of inane micro in large worlds.
i) if they go with SMAC-style social engineering... make them fit. Morgan had the LEAST incentive to go Free Markets, for instance, because a mere +1 economy would suffice for the big boost rather than +2.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
At the risk of sounding nasty, did you read the article? It pointed out a lot of nice enhancements, such as the development of culture, making diplomacy (and war) more complex, and allowing trade to be more all-encompassing. Also, one feature that I'm looking forward a lot to is now you have to have the correct resources to build stuff. It gave the example that you need iron to build the unit of "swordsmen", and if one player has a monopoly on iron then only they can build swordsmen. Much more accurate to real-life, as well as begging for all sorts of neato strategerie.
As for Civ 1 and Civ 2, sure the graphics got niftier in Civ 2, but in my mind the huge advance was the customizability. Civ 2 has sooooo muuucchh replay value, it's truly disgusting. I never ever play a straight game anymore, but every month or so I still go back to that game and either download a scenario I haven't played yet or just start a new one from a new side or using a new modpack. There are literally millions of ways to play Civ 2, or you can always just create your OWN. Yes Civ 1 had a little bit of this, but not anywhere near the online community or freely downloadable professionally done scenarios that Civ 2 has. I think that when Civ 3 comes out it's gonna be a helluva game....
For all of those who spent so much time on civ.. And especially historical games freaks you might want to check Europa Universalis The time period of the game is 1492-1792 (The age of discovery until the period just before the Napoleonic wars)
The game involves the entire world with many countries, which are all playable through a simple editing of a text file) military, navy, exploration, colonization, diplomacy.
The most interesting feature is that it's real time.. I hate RTS games.. despise them. but this is different, besides having a pause to issue some orders if you are too overwelmed, you can change speed settings, Real time doesn't harm the game but just makes it much more fun for multiplayer games.
IMHO the true heir for civ/civ2/colonization.